Some excellent progress has been made to put an end to revenge porn this week. Revenge porn is essentially an image or video of someone who is nude or engaging in sexual activity, that is posted on the internet without the consent of the person in the image or video. Last month, Erica Goode at the New York Times wrote about the experiences of female victims with ex-partners who decided to get "revenge" on them by posting private nude images online. Now, there will be a criminal penalty for anyone in California who is convicted of posting sexual images of someone online without their consent, thanks to the Anti-Revenge Porn Bill that was signed into action on Tuesday, October 1, 2013. Before this law, if someone wanted to pursue legal action toward someone who posted images without their consent, they had to go through costly civil court proceedings to sue for defamation of character and/or privacy infringement.

Revenge porn is not a new problem. In fact, it used to be confused with amateur porn. When today’s top 5 porn sites first started-up they were primarily comprised of revenge porn. These sites (which I will purposely not name) are designed like YouTube, where users can post videos and images of women who are nude or having sex in order to provide free content to other users. Thus, most porn users who only go to these popular sites think they aren’t supporting the porn industry because they “aren’t paying for porn” and “they are looking at real women”. However, it is hard to classify that type of porn use as righteous with video and image captions like, “Watch me *#%K my ex!” or “Check out this chick *#%ked. I don’t even know her name!” Until recently, no one knew what to call this type of porn and thus it defaulted to ‘amateur porn’. Today there is also content from older pornographic films and international pornographic films on these sites in order to avoid copyright issues, but revenge porn still dominates the content.

Unfortunately, the new bill doesn't solve all problems associated with revenge porn, but it is a great start. The law only makes some forms of revenge porn a misdemeanor punishable by up to 6 months in jail and a $1,000 fine because it only applies to photos taken by others that were posted with an intent to cause serious distress. The bill does not address nude selfies, which can be given to a partner with the intent of private use only. In 2010, an article in the Iowa Law Review explained the role the state could play in protecting youth from the unanticipated, reputational and psychological consequences of sending nude pictures to a romantic partner via “sexting” (1). This bill does little to address sexting among minors, which is still legally considered “self-produced child pornography” (2), despite its growing popularity with 20-30% of teens having sent naked pictures of themselves (3).

If a woman takes a nude selfie, it doesn’t mean that she intends to make that image public. Just as we recognize that two people having had consensual sex doesn't mean later encounters are necessarily consensual, we should recognize that a picture offered as a consensual sexual gesture can later be turned into a tool to harass and abuse. Even though it is certainly more the case that girls and women are the ones in the photos and boys and men are the distributers, I teach young women not to share or distribute nude pictures and I also teach young men not to share or distribute nude pictures. I definitely think it is natural to want to share nude images with someone you trust. Sadly, sharing nude photos and videos without detrimental consequences was a luxury that was afforded to those living before a digital age, when it cost money to get “double-prints” instead of “single-prints” and you had to go to the trouble of getting your nude images developed by someone other than the person down at the local Rite-Aid. The limit in quantity potential for nude pictures before the digital age made the possibility of your entire school, company or organization seeing those photos, slim to none. The motivation today is also less internally-driven and more externally-driven by an effort to emulate sexual imagery in the media in order to compete with other women in our “pornified culture” (4). Many of the women and girls I talk with also think that providing naked images of themselves to a boyfriend will ensure that he won’t masturbate to porn, but that rarely works because pornography isn’t about nudity it is about novelty.

Even though revenge porn website enthusiasts swear their motivation is nothing but an opportunity 'to look at real naked women' in reality, the act of uploading a nude picture to punish a woman for leaving you is less of an act of sexual expression and more similar to the criminal behavior of stalking and harassment (5). It is clear that non-consensual distribution of sexual imagery and videos is intended to humiliate the victim. With that in mind, we should amend stalking and harassment legislation to reflect our new cyber-reality. Just because the abusive acts are happening in cyberspace doesn't mean the experience of being humiliated and harassed by an ex is any less terrifying. So, what can you do to help? Please sign this petition and read more about what else you can do to criminalize revenge porn in your state.

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My intention is to create a forum to critically discuss sexuality, gender, sexual media, and social media by integrating information from academic and mainstream sources. I do this so you can be informed about what is going on in the sex research world and apply the research to your life. I hope this process produces more sexually competent people who raise sexually competent kids.

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I am a sex researcher, sex educator, MSU professor, and National Institute on Drug Abuse Fellow. This is my blog.